60 HE }\ TD E J ,I! '. A ". I \, .' \ · .;.Ñ fJ , , ' $ ;JJ" )\ , OFF ßR.OADW A Y -r: HE " It '- f ::::::: l' .-..tI ï / .& ""'" .. --- " J AMES JOYCE'S DUBLINERS," at the Roundabout, is not a dram- atization of James Joyce's "Dubliners," as its somewhat sneaky title might lead one to believe. It is a dramatization, by J. W. Riordan, of Stanislaus Joyce's affectionate memoir, "My Brother's Keeper," and tells, in one brief episode after another, the sto- ry of the Joyce family of Dublin, with Stanislaus, as occasional narrator, slip- ping in and out of the episodes and ty- ing one to the next. "My brother did not invent Ireland," he tells us near the beginning. "He in vented Dub- lin. . . . Many years later, Jim's collec- tion of short stones was published. We are all his 'Dubliners' in thIn dis- guises." Echoes of that book and of "PortraIt of the Artist as a Young Man" pervade the play as we watch the family slide down the middle class, flIng by rung, wIth the father, ] ohn Joyce, hiding his hurt pride in bravado and drowning it in drink. The evening opens with a musical party: a woman is singing an Irish song, and all the other characters, in party clothes- among them young Jimmy on a foot- stool-are grouped about In tableau. Immediately, "The Dead" comes to mind, and the play closes with James, grown to manhood, standing outside the door of his father's house, about to go into exile on the ContInent and de- claring, with slight varidtions, "Snow was general all over Ireland" and the rest of the haunting final paragraph of "The Dead." Fragments of the other stories run through the evening. The father loses his Job in a tax office that is the counterpart of the office in "Coun- terparts" (the closing line of "Coun- terparts" is used in a throwaway anec- dote somewhere else), and he becomes a professional canvasser for votes. His meeting with the other canvassers and their discussion of Edward VII's im- pending visit which ends wIth Mr. Joyce's passionate defense of Parnell and his poem to Parnell's memory (here sung by Stan Watt, who plays I 1 '-""'"" >< ,..,. ow - --.... I c:{', ", \ :,j;I- . " '.., :., .. ...;;:::$" --'" 1 '..fo'x . , :;;;::.,,? " ,,.. ... ; -..oOoA" . . '.. .".:. ---... ...""""" #. i-'-'- .....w<-..:.... "t '. .1 . o:.... . . "). ....J; : " ';.<- b .g, ._. ((Damn zt, Matthews, can't you see I'm trying to put you at your ease?" John Joyce) are a condensation of "Ivy Day In the CommIttee Room." There are cheerful scenes between the two boys, Jim and Stanny, and sad ones of the family getting poorer and poorer, moving, after being dispossessed, from one house to another, with all thejr worldly goods in a wheelbarrow. We see James go into Nighttown and p:ck up his first whore-a chubby, merry, singing girl-and then, jaunty as ever, ask directions to the nearest church so he can make a confession. A confes- sion, by the way, that does not stop him from picking up the next girl. Before that, we see him as a schoolboy enrag- ing his Jesuit master with a speech in praise of Henrik Ibsen, dnd long after that we see him at his mother's death- bed refusing her pleas for his prayers, hecause by then he has turned his back on the Catholic Church forever. The tone of the play is gen tIe and pleasurable, reflecting Stanislaus Joyce's sweet disposition rather than that of his fiery brother, and reflecting, too, Mr. Riordan's outright love for Joyce's early writings. The good actors assem- bled are responsive to their roles and the words they speak and sing. Eleven actors handle twenty-eIght parts, and the characters are always clear. Ty McConnell does veryweIl as Stani- slaus, and so do Martin Cassidy as James, Mr. Watt as their father, and IVlichael Hagerty, Ruby Holbrook, ""alter Klavun, Justine Johnston, Erika Petersen, Don Perkins, Frank Hamilton, and Kent Rizley as every- body else. Under Gene Feist's direc- tion, the play moves swiftly. A quibble: much is made of James's eyeglasses in his schoolboy scenes, yet we never see hIm wearing them as either a boy or a grown man-as if it wen-' essen cial that Joyce be p resen ted to an audience as a handsome, unmarred ledding man, when every literate per- son knows that that IS not at all what he looked like and that he was nearly blind without his spectacles. Otherwise, all goes pretty well at the Roundabout. (High time!) One-this] oyce nut, at any rate-enjoys the playas much for what it brings to mind as for what it is. " D OWN BY THE RIVER \VHERE W ATERLILIES ARE DISFIG- URED EVERY DAY," by Julie Bovasso, is three lethal hours of facetiolTsness and pranky incoherence about (for all I know) war and revolution and men- tal retardation and you name it. U su- ally, mine is a slow burn, but this chaotic production gave me all the time I needed. It is the current entry of the Circle Repertory Company. -EDITH OLIVER